No liveblogging. Just Broadway geeking.

Who else is depressed that I have no television at the moment and thusly cannot liveblog SNL tonight?

Just me?

Fine.

So this isn’t a super short post, I will tell you that I did not like Spring Awakening (which is closing January 18).

Spring Awakening? Eh. Maybe if the cast had been better. Hunter Parrish was pretty phenomenal, actually, though his singing voice? Not so much. It was much stronger in the second half, but the first half he just seemed shaky and unsure. A play that has a warning level because, OMG SO MUCH SEX!!!1! really didn’t have too much sex, or too much plot, or too much story, or too much anything really. It moved fast enough in the first act, but the second act lagged, and I was pretty much asleep towards the end. I love RENT, as any reader of this blog will know, and I am newly obsessed with In the Heights, so it’s not like I’m not all about the “new Broadway,” but this didn’t do it for me. I like acting through movement and eye contact and inference, but the inference and movement here just seemed like weakness on behalf of the book writer. Like.. I can’t put better words in their mouths so.. you guys figure it out, k? See! He’s crying! Pain! Unspoken pain! Several members of the ensemble were mediocre at best, and all of the most interesting stuff was touched on for at most a single song and never mentioned again. Lazy, lazy storytelling. But to each their own, right? And to be totally, completely fair, this sounds kind of scathing, but I didn’t hate it. I thought it was okay. I wouldn’t pay to see it again, and since it’s closing I won’t really have to worry about that, but still. Just okay.

The Tony performance seems much more exciting than what I saw, so maybe it really all lies in the cast. Maybe not, though, I saw RENT with a weak cast once, and it was still entertaining. Oh, and don’t get me started on the choreography.

Aww, the 1996 Tony performance by the cast of RENT.

And, awww, Taye Diggs crying for Idina Menzel when she won her Tony for Wicked. Man, I could watch Youtube clips all night. And maybe so could you.

Okay, I’ll stop the Broadway geeking out now. But for good measure, we’ll close it out with some In the Heights.